mankind; if these could be solved, I would accept, with more or less
equanimity, any political or economic system which ministered to that
end. Unfortunately, however, cultural questions have little interest for
practical men, who regard money and power as the proper ends for nations
as for individuals. The helplessness of the artist in a hard-headed
business community has long been a commonplace of novelists and
moralizers, and has made collectors feel virtuous when they bought up
the pictures of painters who had died in penury. China may be regarded
as an artist nation, with the virtues and vices to be expected of the
artist: virtues chiefly useful to others, and vices chiefly harmful to
oneself. Can Chinese virtues be preserved? Or must China, in order to
survive, acquire, instead, the vices which make for success and cause
misery to others only? And if China does copy the model set by all
foreign nations with which she has dealings, what will become of all of
us?

China has an ancient civilization which is now undergoing a very rapid
process of change. The traditional civilization of China had developed
in almost complete independence of Europe, and had merits and demerits
quite different from those of the West. It would be futile to attempt to
strike a balance; whether our present culture is better or worse, on the
whole, than that which seventeenth-century missionaries found in the
Celestial Empire is a question as to which no prudent person would
venture to pronounce. But it is easy to point to certain respects in
which we are better than old China, and to other respects in which we
are worse. If intercourse between Western nations and China is to be
fruitful, we must cease to regard ourselves as missionaries of a
superior civilization, or, worse still, as men who have a right to
exploit, oppress, and swindle the Chinese because they are an "inferior"
race. I do not see any reason to believe that the Chinese are inferior